Sunday, 25 November 2012

THREE days before the formal
opening on Friday last week, CORA Secretary-General, Mr. Toyin Akinosho, had set the tone, when he stated that‘Narratives of Conflict,’the
theme for the 14th Lagos Book and Art Festival, LABAF, encapsulates the nation’s body polity and how very
fitting most of the books under review capture the perplexing complexity of
Nigeria’s politics.

The art activist, Akinosho further
stated that LABAF is different from other festivals
because its organisers always
insisted on talking about texts and not just ideas, adding, “we must be
addressing texts and examine Nigeria’s issues, situations through texts”.

This premise appropriately set the tone for the various
discussions that eventually took place in three days of intense conversation on
various books and personalities in the book and culture industry.

FIRST on the bill on Friday was the Bishop of Sokoto
Catholic ArchDiocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, whose book, Witness to
Justice brought to public domain
afresh the Truth Commission set up at the inception of Nigeria’s return to
democratic rule in 1999.

While the commission popularly known as Oputa Panel
spiritedly worked to unearth the sundry abuses Nigerians suffered under
military rule, its work never went beyond the prime time soap opera it was at
the time. For wanting Nigerians not to forget that dramatic episode, Kukah
sifted through the dense volumes and brought out a book both for the reader's enjoyment and enlightenment.

Kukah was concerned that Nigeria’s general amnesia and
willingness to forget so quickly had already caught up with the commission he
served as secretary, hence his book, Witness to Justice. The Catholic priest and public intellectual, is not happy that Nigerians have not engaged the
recommendations of the commission with the seriousness it deserves. What has
irked him most is that while he had been invited to several other countries to
talk about the commission, it has generally been forgotten at home.

In his conversation with writer, arts manager, Tolu Ogunlesi, Kukah restated the importance of the
Oputa Panel and its result, saying, “The book makes a lot of difference; that’s
why we are here talking about it. It has sold well beyond the average. But it
has come to me as a great disappointment that there’s no invitation, especially from
nigerian universities, where constant research and reflection on the state of
the nation ought to be taking place, to
ask me what really happened”.

He confessed to approaching the job with cynicism at the
time
of his appointment. He said he did not
believe Nigeria had the courage to withstand the truth to be unmasked by a
commission of such magnitude. He noted, “The book is not about power or here
and now; it’s about the future and to address the anti-intellectualism in our
society. You get a sense that people are in the universities because they just
want to be there.

“In this country, people come into politics without the
barest idea what politics is about. So, the Truth Commission validates the
saying that if you want to hide something from a black man, put it in a book.
No one has done anything about the report ever since”.

On the question of victimhood occasioned by the long years
of military rule, Kukah argued that the strength of the panel was its ability
to have brought together many people of diverse backgrounds to one spot to talk
about the evils done to them by the state and its
apparatuses. He stated, “What held these people together was that Nigeria was a
basket of injustice and evil had become so pervasive. Nigerians now knew that
the military had been so corrosive nobody wants it any more; and dictatorship diminishes humanity.

“Now that we are free, let me put it that way, let’s
treasure it and ensure that the military does not come back. Some of us take
our freedom for granted. So that when a man says that he became born again in prison,
don’t laugh at him; it’s a serious matter. When people have gone through those
traumas, they need to talk about them. Unfortunately, we don’t have the
platform to tell their stories; no therapy to help them heal their traumatic
experiences”.

He noted that in writing Witness to Justice, he has been able to lend his voice to the voiceless
people that came to the commission. He said the commission was as a result of
an environment where power runs amok, as it once did in the country, and even
in a democracy. He also argued that some of the problems plaguing the country
were because of impunity, noting that from the legal, law enforcement to the
system all had been compromised.

Kukah expressed opinion that
it was the vacuum of uncertainty and systemic failures in many areas of
national life that religion was filling, with its many wrong-headed variants
assailing the psyche daily.

Bishop Kukah also spoke on Chinua Achebe’s controversial
book, There Was A Country: A
Personal History of Biafra, saying
reactions to it were that of “a people not ready for things of real value. I
have read the book and I don’t agree with some things in it but if you disagree
with somebody based on the things he has written, then write your own. But like
everything in Nigeria, people are talking about the book because of hearsay.
This is why our country will not be able to overcome the troubles of yesterday.
Today, our democracy means ability to agree with you always; if I disagree with
you, it becomes something else”.

Sitting with Ogunlesi, on
the Concert stage (once a gallow) of the Freedom Park -- which was a Colonial
prison on Broad Street -- Bishop Kukah also entertained questions from the
public on the state of the nation; and he seemed very much pleased with the
enthusiams shown by the secondary students who were in the audience, saying it
shows that it is possible for Nigeria to have a politically conscious citizenry
in the future.

THEcolloquium, which was on ‘Narratives of Conflict’,
explored some relatively new texts that highlight
the nation’s recent historical march and the part played by these participants
in the shaping of the democratic space. The texts include Open Graveyard by Wale Osun, Out of the Shadows by Kayode Fayemi (now governor of Ekiti State), Rose
and Bullets by Prof. Akachi Ezeigbo
and There Was A Country by Chinua
Achebe. The session had Dr. Niran Okewole, Tade Ipadeola, and Deji Toye; it was moderated by Tunji Lardner. One of the
authors, Ezeigbo, who was present was also invited to join the panelists.

These four books dwell on some critical phases Nigeria has
navigated in the cause of its 50 years of
existence. The books explore the many high dramas Nigeria and Nigerians have
undergone; how a promising nation soon
found itself floundering shortly after independence and the spirited efforts
made to reshape it ever since, with the ubiquitous military that hijacked it
for a long time. The stories are accounts of individual encounters with the
state might under military rule and the not-so-pleasant results of these
encounters both on the psyche of the individuals and society at large.

For Ipadeola and the other panelists, Nigeria’s failure
produced its shock waves on these writers with the result that they have
attempted to narrate this same story in their own unique voices that often
differ from each other to the point of conflict. So much so that the reader is
left open-mouthed as to whether it is the same communal experience, of military
rule and dictatorship and the democratic struggles that left many wounded,
maimed and dead -- the writers are writing about.

How then can Nigeria’s story be properly understood if there
was no one unifying, single story by the many writers telling her story? Is
there a thing as a grand narrative to tell a country’s story?

Ipadeola submitted, “Achebe, Kukah and Fayemi all seem to be
asking: How did a promising country become unprepared for the calamity that was
coming? Whether it’s government, civil society, religious structures, things
didn’t just happen as they were supposed to. We’re at the danger of isolating
the 1990s (the military era) as the dark period of Nigeria’s history, but there
have been crises since the 1950s. There’s a lot more that Nigeria can gain by
closely studying the writers under scrutiny who were there when these things
were happening.

“Achebe’s a great book but it falls into the error of
arguing and not clarifying. I think Achebe knows how powerful his prose is and
uses it to argue. Why was there no charge of genocide laid against anyone for
the dead or living? Until we begin to have biographies, we will not be able to
break out of the traps of untruths,” remarked Ipadeola.

The lawyer, poet, and president of Nigeria chapter of Poets, Essayists
and Novelists, Ipadeola also argued that although Achebe’s book is an important one, no African
author had risen to write a book as well as Russia’s Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s August
1914 to make issues that had been
nebulous clear.

On whether there could be a single, unifying narrative about
the country’s history, the panelists differed significantly. Okewole asked: Is
there a single narrative in all the stories of conflict? He noted that there
could be some flaws in Achebe’s book because it depended on memory, which
lapses over time and that memory is also selective. “Now, we should be looking
at many narratives rather than a grand narrative and to take a decision as a
nation to look at multiple narratives.

“So, why did the Nigerian project fail? Why did it not
happen? Why was the project hijacked? We have to hold the political class
responsible for not doing what they ought to do!”

In her intervention, Ezeigbo said
she believed in subjectivity. She argued
that people are different and respond differently to common issues. To the Professor of
English at the University of Lagos, there
is no such thing as a grand narrative of a country’s
history, as it might seem limiting. She noted that the “Nigerian Civil War had
generated a lot of controversies. Everybody is entitled to his own view.
Achebe’s interpretation is his own memory;my narrative Roses
and Bullets,though fictional, is based on fact as I saw it during
the war as a young schoolgirl in her teenage years”.

Ezeigbo believes that There was
A Country
has stirred controversy because it is an Achebe’s. She said“Many
individuals have written volatile books that have gone unnoticed. This is his
own interpretation of history. Write your own book if you disagree”.

The lawyer, poet and
dramatist, Toye finds Achebe’s view of
Igbo victimhood based on hatred from other ethnic group out of sync with the
reality. He noted that rather than a deterministic view of history, virtual
history should be the guiding light, adding that multiple narratives of history
should be encouraged.

Indeed, Nigeria, like an over excited monkey, has been
dancing on the precipice and neared its tipping point with its many devious
acts that have denied it true nationhood. However, Okewole stated that the country's turning point could be just as dramatic as its
tipping point. The nation’s turning point, stated the
medical doctor, writer, could be the
“coming together of a few people who have the courage of conviction to act” in
a particularly positive manner for the good of all.

STILL in literary
discourse at the festival,under the theme‘My Story, My Country’ the
author of Power, Politics & Death,
the journalist, Segun Adeniyi took the hot seat and was taken to task on issues
surrounding his explosive book, a memoir of his years as spokesman to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. In what was apparent
defence of the position he took during Yar’Adua’s ill health and final death,
Adeniyi shot off on an emotional note and highlighted the politicisation of a
president’s ill health and death.

Adeniyi, a former editor of ThisDay newspaper before he took
the job of SeniorSpecial
Assistant to the President on Media,
admitted to having taken some crucial decisions to either avert or set in
motion certain events that would have worked negatively or positively to affect
the nation or power equation as it was then. First, Adeniyi asserted, “I had no
regret taking the job; I never knew my stewardship was going to be that
dramatic. The book took me six months to complete at Harvard University where I
did my Fellowship”.

The former presidential spokesperson said he fell out of
favour with President Goodluck Jonathan, then Vice President, for failing to call him Acting
President at a point when it appeared Yar’Adua had become incapacitated. But he
insisted that he didn’t even know the exact state of health of the President to
have acted appropriately. But that when he realised his mistake by the unfolding events the following
day, he acted quickly by calling a press briefing where he corrected himself.
But by then, the political mood had been soured and a purported 'cabal' theory had
gained ascendancy.

In a rising tone laden with so much emotion, Adeniyi avowed,
“Nobody knew what was going on; everybody was apprehensive. I didn’t know
anything either. It didn’t make any sense to call Jonathan Acting President
when the President was in the country. But when I realised it, I corrected myself. There were all sorts of
dynamics -- politics, religion; people
wanted power to stay where it was. But next day, I called a press briefing and
called Jonathan Acting President and because of that thing, people thought
there was a cabal and people called me all sorts of names”.

Adeniyi blamed the uncertainty at the time to apparent
lacuna and inability of the Office of the Attorney-General and the National
Assembly to advice the President appropriately and promptly on what to do but
none of them did anything. He, however, noted that he would rather not blame
anybody because of “the nature of our country; next time, we will learn from
it. We have learnt from it. The deputy Governor of Taraba State is now Acting
Governor as a result of the Constitutional amendment.”

QUOTE:

Now that we are free, let me
put it that way, let’s treasure it and ensure that the military does not come
back. Some of us take our freedom for granted. So that when a man says that he
became born again in prison, don’t laugh at him; it’s a serious matter. When
people have gone through those traumas, they need to talk about them.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the platform to tell their stories; no therapy to
help them heal their traumatic experiences.

Chronicling the past is not an
engagement in which Africa has recorded much credit. In most cases, the past is
lost in the fog of oral tradition and general amnesia. With the increasing minimal
status accorded oral tradition, it becomes harder to distil some aspects of our
past and make any sense of it. But there are some who would not let the past go
easily without unearthing some of its milestones that continue to shape our
future. This is the serious, historical task Offonmbuk C. Akpabio set for herself
in He Dared: The Story of Okuku Udo Akpabio, the Great Colonial African
Ruler (Xlibris Corporation, London;
2011).

In He Dared,
Akpabio undertakes a daunting task through oral accounts and documents left
behind by colonialists and missionaries to piece together the life and times of
one of the illustrious sons of present day Akwa Ibom State, who started his
journey before the turn of the last century.

Udo Akpabio, who later became famous by being among the
first to come into the sphere of colonial influence and consequently being an
administrator as a warrant chief, a position he effectively wielded with his
royal one as paramount ruler of Ukana, was to play a great political and
cultural role amongst his people.

Indeed, Akpabio’s posthumous biography is great tribute to an
illustrous African, who wielded much influence among his people and gained
respect even from the overbearing colonial officers. It’s an honour to a man
who held two offices seamlessly and discharged his duties admirably such that
he dispelled notions of imbecility often associated with much of Africa by the
colonising West.

SIRED by Umo Ntuen Ebie Emem,
founder of Ikot Ide in Ukana in present day Essien Udim Local Government Area
of Akwa Ibom State, Udo Akpabio followed the footsteps of his father in ascending
the throne his father literally created. Although he was not the first son, it
eventually fell to his lot to be crowned Okuku Ukana or Ukana clan head.

But Udo Akpabio had a harrowing childhood. He was still
young when his mother had twins, a forbidden occurrence at the time. His mother
was only saved from being killed because her husband and clan head loved her so
much. She was later ostracised and a hut built for her at the outskirts of
town. But her children could not live or interact with her.

She was eventually sold off to the Aro Chukwu slave
merchants to underline the gravity of her offence. This was the period before
the white people stepped on African soil to stop some of the evil practices
among the Calabar people, especially the killing of twins.

Udo Akpabio had to be taken to his maternal place to be
raised. When he came of age, he returned to his father’s homeplace, where he
however had an incident that nearly claimed his life. But he had started to
distinguish himself as a great farmer and trader in various commodities. Back
to Ikot Ide, he became established in his farming and trade and rose to be one
of the wealthiest men around.

As the author narrates, “Udo Akpabio had all the trappings
of a great man. He excelled in his trade and was widely respected. His friends
and associates spanned through Ukana and beyond. It was, therefore, not
surprising that the Afe Nkuku
(council of elders) decided to make him the Obong Isong, otherwise referred to as the Okuku in Ukana clan”.

While trying to consolidate his hold on power, neighbouring
Otoro people started a war against Ukana Ikot Ituen over a land matter. This
war was to test his skill as leader and his people. It ended in his favour, but
after he got wounded.

Coincidentally also, this was the period when the
TransAtlantic Slave Trade had been abolished in England and America, but a few
elements still carried out the trade on both sides – African and European –
particularly the Aro Chukwu people.

The British people had also begun to make incursions
into the coastal planes and had made war with both the great Benin Empire and
destroyed it in 1897 and the Aro Chukwu people, who were prominent in slave
dealings at the time.

Eventually Udo Akpabio and his people, largely out of fear
and uncertainty of the intentions of the advancing British and in order to
protect their territory, came face to face with the British military might.
They lost the war and soon came under the British influence that was stationed
at Ikot Ekpene.

When peace returned and a leader was being sought by the
British in the form of a warrant chief to help administer the local people, Udo
Akpabio was thrust forward for the exalted position from which he exercised
great authority both to the admiration of his people and that of the British.

THE author, a third
generation Akpabio, has, with this remarkable biography, given a strong and
sweeping voice to the history of a period that would otherwise have been
beclouded with distance of time far removed from her own time. She tells the
story of her great, great forebear with remarkable faculity, relying on oral
narratives and accounts kept by white missionaries, especially of Rev. Grooves,
who had written about her grand forebear and had recorded Udo Akpabio’s
thoughts on a vast array of objects.

While dwelling on the great life and times of Udo Akpabio,
the author also uses the canvas of He Dared to paint what was the real first encounter between
the African population and their visiting colonisers. Through this narrative,
we see first-hand the various administrative transitions and reforms that took
place and how the locals responded to the ever-changing times they lived, not
least the tensions between imported values – like the abolition of slave trade,
the stoppage of the killing of twins and the practice of human sacrifice in the
event of the death of a king or titled men in the community.

As leader mediating between the alien, white man and
his people, Udo Akpabio went to great length to make his people respond to the
changing landscape from the political, cultural and social dimensions, from
their otherwise secure ways of doings things.

His ability, even as an uneducated man, to see far ahead of
his peers and decide on the right causes of action to take endeared him to
many.

Married to 29 wives and fathering many children,
Udo Akpabio was first to send his children to the white man’s school to learn
the new tricks being foisted on them. Even at that remote period, he had the
foresight to allow one of his daughters to go to school; she was baptized
Elizabeth and became a great teacher in the mission schools of the period.

His sons read wide and some travelled abroad for further
studies while others promoted Western education to the point of setting up
scholarships to enable aspiring young people to gain education. This was in the
1920s in the Calabar region.

Udo Akpabio sired many illustrious sons, who later became
prominent in Nigeria’s socio-political and cultural life.

The author meticulously chronicled these sons and grandsons
and great grandsons in He Dared.
Some of these grandsons include a judge of the Federal High Court, Lagos, the
late Akpan Eukinam-Bassey, the late Justice (Senator) Nsima Akpabio, Isong
Ibanga Udo Akpabio, Paul Usoro among others.

HE Dared provides a grand sweep of historical, cultural and
social materials of the time Udo Akpabio lived. The customs, traditions,
festivals and the general ways of life of the people are presented in a
memorable manner. The author’s painstaking attention to details is remarkable
and commendable.

With this book, the lineage of the Akpabio clan, of
which the current governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, is a member,
is preserved for generations.

For generations to come, the Akpabio clan and many others in
Ukana clan will remain grateful to the author who has brought her storytelling
talent to recreate an otherwise forgotten but remarkable episode in the history
of the region and the role their forefathers played in shaping the colonial
experience of southern states of Nigeria. It’s a book researchers will find
treasurable.

Saturday, 17 November 2012

She is his grand
daughter-in-law, who found the life and times of her grand father-in-law such
colourful and rich subject she undertook to write his biography. Indeed in the
book, He Dared: The Story of Okuku Udo Akpabio, The Great Colonial African
Ruler, Ofunmbuk Akpabio, a
lawyer and writer, paints the panoramic political, economic and cultural
landscape in which the father of former Premier of old Eastern Region, Ibanga
Akpabio, grand father of current governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio,
and other prominent sons, who was a Warrant Chief for the colonialists and
leader of his people in Ukana clan operated. The book will be launched on
December 20, 2012 in Uyo.In this
interview, she gives insight into her fascination for her subject:

The book is something that
came about as a result of curiosity. I was really curious because there is so
much about the legend, because his is a legend in our part of the world. So, I
decided to find out more about him just beyond the stories that were being told
about Okuku Udo Akpabio.

One sad thing was that I couldn’t really find a book that
chronicled his life and times unlike in the West, where you find so many things
about great men, so many articles and books written about George Washington,
for instance. But we couldn’t find much; just a few materials in the Calabar
Museum, where I found an excerpt from a book written by one Margery Perham; she
was a British writer. She stayed in Nigeria in the early 1920s.

She wrote a book about 10 Africans and she wanted to find
out about the most remarkable Africans who had done so much for their people
and for the British. So, she earmarked 10 Africans and out of that was Okuku
Udo Akpabio. So, there is an excerpt of her book at the Calabar Museum and a
photograph of Okuku Udo Akpabio.

So, I started poring over the articles, books and journals
of these colonial administrators to try to find who knew him at the time he
lived. So, that is just about how the book came about. But the book actually is
on a man who lived in the late 19th century and early 20th century. This was a
man that dared where others dreaded. He was somebody who had intriguing
insight; he was someone who was filled with wisdom and was able to steer the
affairs of his people very cleverly and acted as a bridge between the
indigenous people, the Anang people and the colonialists.

So, they found him very remarkable and useful in terms of
maintaining the peace. Before he became a Warrant Chief, a chief by government
Warrant, he was already a Paramount Head or clan head in Ukana. He was able to
steer the affairs of his people remarkably well.

Now, what was remarkable about this man was that he had this
leadership quality right from when he was small. He was not supposed to be the
clan head by lineage, but because of his wisdom and interaction with many other
groups because of his business interests. When it came to choosing a leader,
the people felt that this was a man that had traveled widely and gained a lot
of experience in dealing with people and that this was the man they wanted to
lead them in the clan.

So, they made him a clan head and he was able to manage
things very well. Remember, we’re talking about the time of slave trade.
Despite the fact that this man wielded so much influence, he refused to be
sucked into the greed of the slave traders. While the British and Americans had
abolished slave trade, it became a hot commodity; you know, anything that is
contraband sells more. So, the slave traders that were coming from the Oyo axis
and the hinterland wanted to get more slaves to sell to the unscrupulous white
men and local collaborators still doing it.

One or two of them approached him urging him to use his
great influence to do the business; but Udo Akpabio told them he would never
lay his hands on another fellow human being and sell him or sell his brother
for money and he made sure that nobody did that around his enclave. He
completely frowned against it, preached against it yet he was not even a
Christian or moved by Christian beliefs. He was moved by the traditional
beliefs that one must be the others’ keeper.

Ironically, although he was not educated, he encouraged his
sons to gain Western education. He was intrigued by the white man; he felt that
if the white man is somebody that know so much, then he saw the sense in his
sons learning the ways of the white man. The governor is not the first
prominent Akpabio we are having; he is building on history. If you remember Ibanga,
the Minister and Premier in the former Eastern Region, who passed the motion
for the setting up of University of Nigeria, Nnsuka, when he was the Minister
for Education in the Eastern Region. Akpabio Hall is named after him in that
university. That was one of the man’s direct sons.

There are several Akpabios, great professionals; I just
wanted something of a legacy, what makes this family thick. In my opinion, the
Akpabios are the largest stock of one single entity with great professionals,
with leadership qualities and attributes in everything that they do. So, I’m
saying to the world, ‘look at the man, look at what he did’. He was a farmer,
who had a lot of farmlands; he cultivated them and traded with the produce.

But what made him great was that he was a leader; he was
Justice of the Peace; he was a judge in the colonial court. The colonialists
wanted someone who had a structure already on the ground, who could influence
people and they made him the President of the Native Court. He was the first
Paramount Ruler of Ikot Ekpene area; indeed, he was a very powerful man.

He dared because these were things that were not common, not
usual at the time; he wasn’t hindered by boundaries. He wanted people to move
beyond the frontiers and embrace Christianity; his children went to Methodist
School; he dared because he rose beyond the traditional norms. He strengthened
these institutions for his own use. The book also talks about the traditional
institutions at that time. How did they work? How was the culture of the people
shaped? It’s a book that talks about the advent of the British and how the
people managed the advent of the British.

A biography talks about a person; this is my own perception
of the man from the materials I have gathered. I just told the story as I know
it. The book is not all about his greatness; it’s also about his weakness as a
normal human being. He had challenges and many ups and downs. The larger
picture is that this was a man that left an enduring legacy, which you can see today
in his offsprings.

Writing a biography is very challenging. Fortunately, the
Aro people have more books written about them. So, what I had from them and
from Rev. Grooves, a white missionary of the Methodist extraction, who came
during the time of Okuku Udo Akpabio; he had a very detailed account the
Africans. I took Rev. Gooves’ book and those of the Aro people; I didn’t make
any judgment about what happened. I just wrote the account about what happened.
I just want people to look at this book and make their own judgment about it.

But more importantly, I just loved Okuku Udo Akpabio because
at that early time, he saw the need for education and he encouraged his people
to go to school. You see that it has helped. He inspired people to go to
school; even one of his daughters at that time went to school in spite of the
ridicule. He had the insight to do what was right.

The Lagos Books and Arts Festival (LABAF) organised by
Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) informally opened on Tuesday with a ‘Book
Trek’. Usually held at the University of Lagos, this year’s Book Trek was held
at Quintessence, Falomo, Ikoyi, Lagos, because of the school’s closure.
However, the paltry audience that turned up almost defeated the organisers’
noble efforts; the ‘Book Trek’ could have been taken to another campus within
the city, but this did not happen.

Nevertheless, the organisers would be consoled by
the quality of discourse the two critics - Mr. John Uwa and Mrs. Adaobi Muo -
doctoral students of Literature of the Department of English, UNILAG under the
supervision of Prof. Akachi Ezeigbo brought to bear on the two books, Ezeigbo’s
Roses and Bullets and Bishop Hassan Kukah’s Witness to Justice. The two books,
one fictional and the other factual, are accounts about Nigeria’s brutal and
rudderless politics since independence. London-based Bubbles FM anchor man,
Lukman Sanusi moderated ‘Book Trek’.

Bishop Kukah will hold vintage conversation with
Tolu Ogunlesi about his book today at the festival ground at Freedom Park,
Broad Street, Lagos, starting from 11am. He will speak on, ‘My Experience at
the Reconciliation Room’.

In his opening remarks, CORA Secretary, Mr. Toyin
Akinosho, restated the festival theme, ‘Narratives of Conflict’, as it
encapsulates the nation’s body polity and how very fitting the two books under
review capture the perplexing complexity Nigeria’s politics has turned out to
be. He noted that the two texts interrogate the national question that keeps
recurring, especially Kukah’s Witness to Justice that brings with it that
critical, journalistic and popular account that is lacking in the nation’s
discourse, which lays bare the absence of critical interrogation that shapes
the fortunes of nations elsewhere.

Akinosho also said although many attendees would be
disappointed that critics rather than the two authors would be discussing the
books, he noted that books would amount to nothing if only the authors talked
about them, since books become public property once they are published. He
indicated that the books typify the Narratives of Conflict and singled out
Witness to Justice, which he said qualified to be called Book of the Year, as a
“storyteller’s account that lasts; the books chosen are chosen because of their
elegance of prose in the conflict narrative”.

Akinosho further stated that a book was as good as
the number of people that engage in it, noting, “That is why LABAF is different
from other festivals; we insist on talking about texts and not just ideas. We
must be addressing texts and examine the issues, situations through texts. But
we’re still not doing a good job of it because audience (attendance) is still
poor”.

Readers as leaders: Bane of ignorance

The worrisome issue of book readership in the country came
to the fore, as it became apparent that not many Nigerians – politicians (from
the President to governors and legislators), academicians, journalists, civil
society people, opinion leaders, clergy and many other Nigerians – have not yet
read Bishop Kukah’s seminal book, Witness to Justice based on his insider
account of the Justice Chukwudifo Oputa Panel, a Reconciliation Commission
since it came out early in the year. For Mrs. Muo, this is a disturbing trend
that has dogged the nation’s heels and every effort to move the nation forward.

She frowned at Nigerians’ level of consciousness to
the basic issues that confront them. She argued that unless Nigerians found a
sound basis for spearheading the so-called constitution conference being
canvassed with a measure of intellectual depth, nothing much would be achieved,
noting, “Our level of consciousness is worrisome. How many people,
intellectuals have read Kukah’s book? What we don’t know is that leaders are
readers. Do you listen to those leading us in this country talk and hear their
grammatical errors, their poor sentence construction, and their level of thinking
that is so porous? And did they listen to President Obama’s acceptance speech?”

She noted that Nigerians had degenerated to the
level of a people only interested in looking for food with the politicians
using poverty as a weapon to keep them down; so much so that Nigerians were
just looking for a means of survival. She queried, ‘How can such people rise
beyond the poverty to higher needs, ideals? Right now, the politicians are
training their children to lead our children unless we do something really urgent
to check them’.

On his part, Uwa said Kukah uses Witness to
Justice to engage Nigerians in a socio-political dialogue, and recounted the
nation’s buoyed optimism before independence and the hopelessness that soon set
in after independence, which has continued till date after over 50 years. Uwa
called for some form of dialogue where Nigeria’s fortunes could be discussed so
as to define the essence of the togetherness of the different nationalities
that make up the country as a realistic basis for equity and justice.

Uwa expressed the hope that someday, the people
would have the courage to look at the issues contained in such documents as
Witness to Justice or even the submissions of Oputa Panel and insist on having
them fully implemented, as a way of saying ‘enough is enough’ of the ongoing
madness that has kept subverting the people’s will and wishes for a genuine
nationhood. “A time will come when bold men will reference these books and do
what is needed to be done,” he affirmed.

War narrative: Roses and Bullets

ALTHOUGH the two books under review are diametrically
different in that one is fictional and one factual, however, they both mirror
Nigeria’s tragic historical march from independence in 1960. Ezeigbo’s Roses
and Bullets is a war novel, but it provides the setting that gave birth to the
narratives that form Kukah’s Witness to Justice. With the civil war fought, won
and lost on the Nigerian and Biafran sides, the military became the inheritor
of a vastly wealthy nation, which they promptly began to plunder with their
civilian cohorts with marked impunity, with a rash of human rights abuses that
necessitated the setting up of Oputa Panel of enquiry on which Kukah’s book is
based.

In effect, Kukah’s factual account is a validation
of Ezeigbo’s fictional narrative. Ezeigbo’s is a war narrative, of the
brutality of war, its effect on innocent civilian population, especially women
and children. The protagonist is a teenage girl, whose sheltered world is
shattered upon the outbreak of the war. She stops school, had to relocate
several times due to the shifting landscape of the war and the desperate times
that enveloped Biafra, including the loss of innocence and a people’s psyche
that was badly traumatised.

For Muo, Ezeigbo’s narrative is a relentlessly
haunting one as Ginika and everyone around her confront the horrors of war. Uwa
sees Ezeigbo’s narrative as her contribution in mining the psychological
distortion the war wreaks on all. Also, that even in war-ravaged situations,
something as mundane as love still finds expression; here also, Ezeigbo finds
expression for her feminine ideals and presents the suffering woman as the
recipient of man’s brutal nature. From her father to her husband, Ezeigbo makes
Ginika to drink from the dregs of men’s mad brew in the name of war.

Ginika is repeatedly raped by men from both sides
of the war and finally becomes pregnant for one who is not her husband. She is
finally rejected by her husband after returning from the war. Her brother, who
also went to war, kills Ginika’s husband for leaving her vulnerable and then
rejecting her. But Ginika triumphs at the end as she overcomes her ordeals and
goes back to school after the war through the kind help of her former school
teacher. This Ezeigbo’s vintage feminine manifesto narrative as the two
reviewers argued.

Muo argued that although Ezeigbo believes in
complimentarity of the sexes, she retains a nagging suspicion about men and she
distorts the male characters such that so endows them with one form of flaw of
the other that grates her female characters. From Ginika’s father to her
husband, women will find reason to be wary of men.

But is Ginika too perfect a character in Ezeigbo’s
hands? Uwa thinks so and said Ezeigbo unnecessarily enriched Ginika almost to
the point of super perfection in her unrelenting portrayal of her seemingly
unjustifiable suffering in the hands of the men in her life. But Muo thinks
otherwise, saying that although presented as a near-perfect character, “Ginika
represents the consequences of the war. A writer is like God that creates and
has prerogatives. Although Ezeigbo ennobles her, she manages to show her
rashness – she talks rashly to her father and goes out partying at night in a
military barrack as a married woman and gets raped in the process and becomes
pregnant. Ezeigbo shows these flaws in her heroine”.

Last week, Uyo, the capital
of Akwa Ibom State played host to writers under the auspices of the Association
of Nigerian Authors (ANA). It was the yearly convention, the 31st edition. It
had as theme Nigerian Literature, Social Media and Security with Canada-based Nigerian scholar, Prof. Pius
Adesanmi as keynote presenter.

The yearly gathering of Nigerian authors has come to
symbolise the indomitable spirit of the country’s literati in its march forward
in spite of the many odds confronting writers and writing in a country that has
gradually become anti-intellectual, where books are no longer the staple diet
of a vast majority.

Yet these writers gather yearly to reflect on the question
of nationhood and how to make the country work better for its citizens.

Chairman of the opening ceremony and notable poet, Odia
Ofeimun captured this indomitable spirit of the Nigerian writer when he averred
that the oneness usually expressed by writers in the country in their yearly
gathering was a source of hope that all was not lost.

Ofeimun noted that writers’ commitment to their cause and to
each other was something the Nigerian polity would need to emulate to move
forward, saying that no mater the challenges facing writers, something good
still managed to come out of them for the benefit of all Nigerians.

He reasoned, “We are opinion leaders, future leaders who
have made Nigeria look like a country; without writers, Nigeria will not be a
country.”

However, in his postulations, Adesanmi submitted that
literature may not necessarily provide security in the physical sense of the
word but noted that literature does secure memory, a vital aspect of nationhood
that must be kept intact for future generations. His submission becomes more
relevant especially in a society like Nigeria where history as subject has been
removed from school syllabuses. Indeed, even history is sometimes seen as a
poor repository of memory, which only literature aptly chronicles amidst the
dins of the present and memory retrieval from the fog of the past.

In fact, Adesanmi noted that literature may not even secure
the individual writer from state persecution like it happened to such eminent
writers as Wole Soyinka, who was imprisoned in 1968 for calling for cessation
of hostility between Nigeria and Biafra, or Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was murdered on
November 10, 1995 for championing the rights of Ogoni people.

Indeed, Adesanmi rephrased his subject to read, “What Does
(Nigeria) Secure?” in order for him to properly situate the problem. For
Adesanmi, therefore, “Every society tells and records the story of their march in history,
of triumphs and travails, of failures and successes, of reversals and progress,
of ups and downs, of heroism and betrayal, of war and peace, of love and hate.

“Fictional truth
secures these memories and acquires an authority superior to other modes of
recording. This trans-temporal authority of fictional truth is the only reason
why we view Ancient Greece today largely through her arts, mostly her
literature and architecture. Think of the trials and tribulations of that
society during the years of the Peloponnesian War. Think of The History of
the Peloponnesian War, a magisterial account of that war written by the great
historian, Thucydides, and ask yourselves why our civilization, looking back at
Ancient Greece today, prefers memories of that war and era secured by the
fictional truths of the Greek tragedians, especially Sophocles and Euripides.
Why does our current civilization prefer to gaze at Ancient Rome through the
fictional truths of a Virgil than the documentary accounts of an historian like
Tacitus?

“I am saying that
a thousand, two thousand years from now, a future civilization will look beyond
the archives constituted by disciplinary history and privilege the truths
secured by Nigerian fiction today as a window into how we negotiated our march
towards the mountaintop, the roads taken and the road not taken (apologies to
Robert Frost), how we lived, laughed, loved, and hated. How we kidnapped. How
we bombed. How we killed. How we pogromed. If, as it is tempting to predict,
given our talent for self-inflicted national injuries, we somehow never make it
to the mountaintop, we need not worry. Our literature will secure that failure
against forgetting.

“Why do people privilege the security offered against forgetting
by literature and the arts? Does it have something to do with the aphorism that
when the chips fall wherever they may, literature and the arts are the only
evidence, the only trace that a civilization truly leaves behind? Civilizations
whose skeletal remains defy even radio carbon dating have left us the marvel of
rock paintings. When the artist, Victor Ekpuk, looks for what remains of his
forbears, the only window he has left to reconnect with them is the scribal art
that has defied time, Nsibidi (art).

“Does the
privileging of the security offered by literature and the arts have something
to do with man’s fundamental instinct of self-preservation? Does a civilization
disappear, confident that evidence of its passage through time has been secured
by the scribal talents of her writers and artists?”

ON the role of literature as memory bank for the future,
Adesanmi further argued, “Writers are the world’s window into a culture. In
essence, those looking back at today’s Nigeria a thousand years from now will
detect evidence of our literature’s attempts to offer the security of a
predicted future. They will read Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests, Chinua
Achebe’s A Man of the People, and the Menippean satires of T.M.
Aluko, especially Chief The Honourable Minister, and glean
evidence of the errors of the rendering.

“They will gain
insights into how fictional truth imperils the artist ironically through its
own vatic function. Let’s not forget the reaction to A Dance of the Forest by a
political establishment, which, like the dog, failed to hear the hunter’s
whistle and perished in the forest of postcolonial anomie.

“If it is clear
from the foregoing that Nigerian literature offers the security of memory and
the armour with which to shatter the carapace of forgetting, it is equally pertinent
to add that the vatic essence of fictional truth is an attribute which makes it
a very dangerous truth indeed. This truth places a double-edged sword in the
hands of the writer. Tell the truth and be damned; don’t tell the truth and be
damned.

“In the attempt to
secure memory and social history with this double-edged sword, the writer often
discovers that the security, which his work guarantees for the social body, is
hardly ever coterminous with the security of the writer. There is often a terrible
opportunity cost: secure memory and forego your own security. This is true
because society hardly accords the writer the privilege of value-free, personal
remembering.

“If you
examine the social memory inscribed in the poetics of my generation from the
perspective of what it sought to secure it from – or against as the case may be
– you will discover that the idea of which nation’s memory is being secured
becomes quite fuzzy, quite uncertain, shorn of a unifying centre, such as
ritual or mythopoeia, which had tied the works of earlier generations to
project nationhood. No matter how expansive and how ambitiously itinerant the
imagination is, it is always possible to detect a silhouette of either the
national or the ethno-national centre in the poetics of Achebe, Soyinka, and
Clark; in the restless social realism of Osundare, Osofisan, Obafemi, Okediran
(what a succession of Os!) and Iyayi, whose novel, Violence, typifies
this trend. To the question – was there a country? – the work and praxis of the
generations before mine had an answer: yes, Nigeria”.

Nigerian literature
and social media (Best novel on 419
by a Canadian)

ON literature and social media, Adesanmi’s said, “being a very
active member of literary cyberia (my neologistic contraction of Cyber and
Nigeria), I could understand and relate to the social media part of the theme”,
saying, “the rise of Cyberia poses the question of border security in a very
real, literal sense. The phase of Nigerian writing which houses writers I don’t
even ever have to meet face to face to feel like I’ve known them my whole life,
largely because they have social media personas, is an interesting phase
indeed. It is an age where literature has been nervous about losing the book
form, as we know…, and now to the efflorescence of forms of literature
associated with blogs, Facebook, and Twitter”.

Adesanmi expressed
the democratic license Cyberia offers its users such as writers, noting that
with the advent of social media, defining a writer within a particular
geographical locale becomes an increasingly difficult task. He noted thus,
“There is a democracy that comes with social media and it has radically
transformed the idea of the writer. Everybody with a blackberry and a blog is
now a potential writer. We may wax puritanical here, declaring that we know who
a writer is; the problem is with cultural shifts in the West that seem to
validate the idea of a nomenclatural borderlessness when it comes to who is a
writer in the age of social media.

“It is in this
expanded context, where literature is increasingly determined by very loose
understandings and definitions, that our emergent crop of writers must try to
secure not just the social memory of their own generation. This new cultural
context challenges their very ability to own stories devolving from our
national experiences, good and bad, in the global marketplace of creativity.

“What does it
mean, for instance, that one of the most powerful accounts of South Africa’s
attempt to exorcise the ghosts of Apartheid through the truth and
reconciliation framework has been written by an American? I am sure you have
heard of the blockbuster novel, Absolution, by Patrick Flanery? What
does it mean that the novel that will probably settle the argument over the
national origin of 419 is not Tricia Adaobi Nwaubani’s I do Not Come to You
by Chance but a novel recently published by a Canadian writer, Will
Ferguson’s 419, which has just been awarded Canada’s biggest literary Prize,
the Giller Prize worth $50,000? The ownership of stories South African and
Nigerian by an American and a Canadian writer has been facilitated largely by
social media. We live in days and times when a Tibetan Monk can write an
authentic Nigerian story, in an authentic Nigerian voice, after spending a year
on Twitter and Facebook”.

WHILE summing up,
Ofeimun restated the function of memory in the make-up of nationhood, noting
that memory was like a limb, which, if lost, would imperil forward movement. He
said, “If you loose your memory, you loose your country. If we want to remake
your country, we must start by remaking our literature.”

Writers remember
Saro-Wiwa, as Mimiko bids to host in 2013

A moment of silence
was observed in honour of slain former president of ANA, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was
killed on November 10, 1995 in Port Harcourt by Gen. Sanni Abacha’s brutal
regime for agitating for the rights of Ogoni people, whose land was and is
still being polluted by the activities of oil companies.

Also, governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo
State, who recently won a re-election, through the state chapter of ANA, bided
for the hosting of ANA 2013 convention. Ondo State last hosted in 2010 and
ordinarily should not be eager to host again considering the financial costs
involved. But as patron and in order for governor Mimiko to launch the
near-completed new arts centre, he intends to host Nigerian writers again to
showcase both the new arts centre and to share his new vision for cultural
production.

While some congress members cheered the
bid, others were skeptical and wondered what the motive was. Kaduna State also
bided to host the yearly gathering next year. But with new ANA rules, hosting
rights would have to be vetted through visits from the national executive to be
sure of preparedness of such states; thereafter, congress would vote online
before the final right is awarded.

THE
inaugural lecture delivered by Prof. Julie Okoh (a professor of Theatre
Studies, University of Port Harcourt) last Thursday at the University of Port
Harcourt was most auspicious. It came in the heels of the yearly Garden City
Literary Festival that ended a fortnight ago in Port Harcourt for which she was
also a panelist dissecting feminine issues.

The title of her lecture was also
instructive as it both echoed and amplified the theme for the festival, which
was ‘Women in Literature’. Her lecture with an equally telling title ‘Towards a
Feminist Theatre’ also situates women’s issues in the domain of critical
literary and intellectual discourses.

Indeed, feminine issues could no longer be brushed aside. Their urgency has
become such that skeptics are beginning to take another look, as the women are
advancing hard arguments and evidences to prove that rights otherwise denied
them could no longer sustained in whatever guise.

And so too did Okoh sought once more to reaffirm what has long become obvious
to many: that women’s rights are as important as men’s rights and those
traditional or patriarchic institutions or even superstitions that seek to deny
women their rights ought to have been thrown away long before now. Indeed, in
her numerous theatrical works such as Edewede (2000) and In The Fullness of Time
(2000), Okoh
has vigorously been deconstructing the patriarchal paradigms that seek to
perpetuate women’s subservience through such rites as female genital
circumcision, women’s right to education and positions of power, demeaning
widowhood rites and relegating women to second class citizens’ position.

Okoh holds the view that such concepts as sexism, which refers to the
discrimination against women on the basis of their sex, with its attendant
reinforcement of behaviour and attitude based on the stereotypical roles people
play in a society and patriarchy, which is societal control through the rule of
men that have combined to keep women down the social ladder. Therefore, for her
and many like, feminism is a reaction against patriarchy and sexism. She
insists that patriarchy is not a natural phenomenon but a social construct. So,
she asks, ‘When and how did it begin? Why did women have to agitate for their
entitlement to basic human rights?’

In her lecture, Okoh takes a long historical journey through the ages to
unearth some of the reasons behind feminine agitations for their rights and how
these practices became entrenched overtime and the many battles women have had
to fight to free themselves from the shackles society has placed on them over
the centuries.

Okoh argues that sexism is still prevalent in Nigeria, noting, “What is the
status of women in contemporary Nigeria? Do they enjoy their basic human
rights? Do they have equal opportunities with their male counterparts? Do they
have protective laws against gender discriminations? How many of them can
boldly make their own decision and stand by it without being afraid of
intimidation, humiliation, condemnation, ostracism and persecution? Today,
women in America and Europe have the same social, political, financial and
legal rights as any man, even though there still exists to some extent ‘glass
ceiling attitudes’. Are there provisions for women in Nigeria to enjoy the same
fundamental rights with men?

“Nigeria is still basically rooted in patriarchal social
structure. And as such, violation of women’s basic human rights is prevalent.
It is a stark reality that affects a large percentage of women across
the country and it cuts across boundaries of age, culture, religion, wealth and
geography. It takes place in the homes, on the streets, in schools, at
workplaces, in farms, in the markets, in religious places. One only needs to flip through the pages of the daily
newspapers to be confronted with gory stories of violation of women’s rights in
the country”.

She then enumerates certain dominant
varieties of sexism in Nigeria to include sex trafficking, fake maternity clinics,
dubbed ‘Baby Farms’ or ‘factories’, which she says are springing up everywhere
across the country notoriously in cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu and
Aba.

Okoh further argues that it is these
evils perpetuated against her kind that she has been fighting as a theatre
teacher and practitioner, particularly with her many expository dramatic works,
stating, “In consonance with the above objectives, the plight of women in
contemporary Nigeria constitutes my major concern. That is why in my critical
essays and dramatic work, I examine, analyze and evaluate all those unwritten
laws and practices converging to restrict and frustrate women from gaining
access to their basic human rights, freedom and empowerment.

“As a literary critic, I have written more than thirty articles, both in
English and in French, some published in Nigeria, others outside Nigeria. The
majority of the articles treat women’s issues. As a theatre practitioner, I
have systematically used the theatre to speak against such crude practices as
widowhood rites, gender discrimination, child abuse, sexual harassment,
childlessness, and female circumcision. On the issue of female circumcision,
I have written two major plays: Edewede (2000) and In The Fullness of Time
(2000),
articles and a book.

“Another traditional practice that has
been vehemently challenged by me is the widowhood rites. Widowhood violence is
one of the major problems faced by most women in contemporary African
societies. Apart from FGM, it is the most sinister and subtle instrument for
reinforcing gender inequality in Africa. The experience may assume different
forms in different communities, but the effects remain basically the
same. The affected widows suffer injustice and psychological trauma.

“Widowhood rites are also still
practiced in many communities Nigeria and many Nigerian dramatists have treated
this topic with great angst: Zulu Sofola in Wedlock of the Gods (1977), Felicia Onyewadume in
Clutches of Widowhood (1996), Stella ‘Dia Oyedepo in On his Demise (2002), Uche Ama-Abriel in A
Past Came Calling
(2004), Ahmed Yerima in Aetu (2006) Jonathan Desen Mbachaga in Widows’ Might (2008) to name a
few.

“In the play Our Wife Forever, I emphasize that systems such as widowhood rites,
property inheritance, levirate law associated with widowhood may have had
validity and relevance in pristine time. But today, in the face of
modernization, globalization, Christianity and internet connectivity, the
structures that served to enforce such cultural practices in traditional
societies in Africa have been dismantled giving way to capitalism and
individualism.

“The subject of female sexuality has
been dramatised in my plays from different perspectives. A high percentage of
young women and little girls experience sexual harassment, rape, incest,
especially paedophilia everyday in this country, yet there is no law against
such crimes. So nobody takes the crimes seriously. This is because the
lawmakers and their law enforcement agency, those who control power, are sometimes
the perpetrators. While treating her plays such as The Mannequins,
Closed Doors and
Cry for Democracy,
these regrettable ugly experiences encountered by girls in contemporary Nigeria, I dissect and
analyze the psychological trauma suffered by the victims as well as
illustrates to them how they could overcome their predicaments and assert
themselves in life.

Okoh points out feminist philosophy of
existence in her plays to include a commitment to advocating cultural equity
and progressive social change with emphasis on women’s empowerment. In her
plays, while condemning the negative elements of African cultural traditions,
she examines their impact on the lives of contemporary African women. By so
doing, the audience is made to realize that most of the traditional practices
are mechanisms instituted by society to repress women’s liberty and to control
their bodies and lives.

But Julie Okoh encourages African women
to reject this debilitating situation. That is why most of her female
characters, instead of negating themselves, are often found striving to
transcend their state of immanence in order to gain their status as
independent, self-conscious human beings determining and executing their own
actions. But they are unable to attain this position until they critically
appraise their situation, overcome that crippling fear in them, fear of their
master.

The need for women to overcome that
obstacle to personal growth is a recurrent motif in Okoh’s plays as could
be seen in the plays: Mask (1988), The Mannequins (1997), Edewede (2000), In the Fullness of
Time (2000),
Aisha (2005),
The Trials (2008),
Closed Doors (2007).